Friday, December 14, 2012

Wagner 52, Hofstra 44 (Or: They took a wrong turn and they just kept going)

The final sequence of the Flying
Dutchmen’s 52-44 loss to Wagner summed up the entire evening and a season
that’s gone south in a hurry.

The ball got loose near midcourt as
the clock wound down and a scrum ensued before Taran Buie emerged with it and
raced towards the basket. But he wasn’t able to get a shot off before the
buzzer, and as the teams lined up for the postgame handshake, Buie took a
handful of shots, as if he could somehow make up the eight-point deficit all by
himself.

“We’re struggling to score right
now, [the] last two games,” Mo Cassara said afterward. “Clearly we’ve got to
get better at executing offensively and getting guys shots where they can be
successful.”

1.) The Dutchmen had another
miserable shooting night in all facets of the game. They were 16-of-48 from the
field, but the quartet of Buie, Matt Grogan, Stephen Nwaukoni and Darren Payen
were 12-of-27 while Stevie Mejia, David Imes, Moussa Kone and Jordan Allen were
a combined 4-of-21 with one field goal apiece. The Dutchmen were also a brutal
8-of-19 from the free throw line, the second straight game in which Hofstra
shot 50 percent or worse from the free throw line and the worst free throw
shooting performance by the Dutchmen since Dec. 9, 2009, when Hofstra was
6-of-16 against Manhattan.

“Some days it goes in the hoop and
some days it doesn’t,” Cassara said. “If you really go back over the last
couple games, we’ve gotten a lot of good shots. I think back to SMU, boy, we had
a lot of point-blank shots. We ran some good offense, just didn’t go in the
hole. We’ve got to concentrate on that, we’ve got to work on it.”

2.) If you’re into such a thing,
pray Buie stays healthy and on the court, because he’s a keeper. He led all scorers
with 16 points and just about single-handedly kept the Dutchmen in the game in
the second half, when he scored 14 of Hofstra’s 20 points. He scored all those
points in a span of 9:18 in which just one other Dutchmen scored (Matt Grogan
on a free throw). He certainly seems to have the “it” gene that Charles Jenkins
had—as well as the ability to play far better after halftime than before it—and
that the Dutchmen lacked last season.

“Like coach said, the ball just
wasn’t going in the hole for a bunch of our guys today,” Buie said. “I was
lucky enough to get it going in the second half. I didn’t have a great first
half. I just credit my teammates and my coaches for getting me open spots so I
could make shots.”

3.) The Dutchmen continued to miss
the guy who used to wear no. 1, and I don’t mean Nathaniel Lester. In two games
since the new/no longer no. 1 was among the four players arrested, the
Dutchmen’s starting front court of Jordan Allen, David Imes and Moussa Kone
have gone just 7-for-31 from the field. Stephen Nwaukoni had another solid game
off the bench against Wagner (six points and a game-high 11 rebounds) and is a
solid 5-of-10 from the field in the two games since the arrests, but he’s just
0-for-3 from the free throw line in that span.

“We’ve got to continue to throw the
ball into them and those guys are going to have to produce, make some plays,”
Cassara said.

4.) For the second straight game,
Grogan took advantage of his suddenly increased playing time by draining two
3-pointers and scoring seven points. Grogan’s first 3-pointer with 6:04 left in
the first half gave the Dutchmen a 15-14 lead—their first lead since the buzzer
sounded against Marshall, which feels like 100 years ago—and his second trey
extended the lead to five points for the first time.

Three days after setting a new
career high with 23 minutes played against SMU, Grogan played 18 minutes—one
shy of his old career high set last year against Wagner. He played a total of
just three minutes in the first seven games of the season.

“He’s given us a great boost,
obviously, offensively, and when he make a couple shots, it really opens the
game up [as] it did in the first half,” Cassara said. “He’s always ready to
play. He’s going to give us everything he has.”

5.) This was a sadly familiar
defeat for the Dutchmen, who squandered a five-point halftime lead (as they did
twice last year) and were outscored 33-20 in the second half (Wagner outscored
the Dutchmen 32-20 in the second half last December in Staten Island).

The Dutchmen got within two or
three points six times in the final 12:14 but never tied the score or took the
lead. In the final 2:30, Wagner’s Kenneth Ortiz drained a pair of daggers—both
of which extended the lead to two possessions—as the shot clock expired.

“Unfortunately had a lot of
opportunities that got away from us,” Cassara said. “[Wagner] hit some tough shots.
Got to give them a lot of credit down the stretch, I thought our kids battled,
and we’ll get back to work and keep battling.”